In a typical computing system, a high resolution display device, such as a liquid crystal display (“LCD”), a cathode ray tube (“CRT”) or any other suitable display device, problems arise regarding enlargement and magnification of characters. For example, a typical graphical user interface system operates below its optimum capabilities, such as a 17″ CRT display utilizing 1024×768 resolution instead of its maximum possible resolution of 1600×1200. This is due in part because most applications were written for use with older hardware and they become too hard to see due to being too small when a large resolution is used.
A current solution is allowing a user to zoom an entire desktop, as found within ATI products such as the HydraVision product. Although this solution does not give the end user proper control over the enlargement and does not provide the option of anti-aliased two dimensional rendering. Other alternate solutions include applications such as Microsoft Magnifier available from Microsoft, Inc., Zoomtext available from AISquared, Liquidview available from Portrait Display Systems and Zoom+ available from Gypsysoft. These current magnification systems work by creating off screen bitmaps and stretching pixels currently on the screen. These applications provide the end user a magnified output which is very blocky. In these cases, the magnification is based on taking each single pixel on the screen and magnifying the pixel by creating a block of N×N pixels on the magnified surface.
Therefore, there exists a need for a method and apparatus that allows for the enlargement and/or magnification of an output display by providing a smooth visual output.